[17] It proved difficult to accurately estimate the size and composition of the Japanese defenses, as attempts to infiltrate reconnaissance parties in the area failed. The Aussies were fighting mad, for they had found some of their captured fellows tied to trees and bayoneted to death, surmounted by the placard, 'It took them a long time to die'. 37, No. 119 deals with the Japanese Military Police Service and Report No. This document provided a complete list of approximately 40,000 Japanese Army officers together with their assignments. This information was put to immediate tactical use and resulted in the capture of the position by the US 7th Cavalry Squadron. [12], As an attack on Hollandia was not expected, no plans were prepared to defend the area prior to the Allied landing. To help ensure soldiers turned in any souvenirs of intelligence interest, the CIC established a souvenir grab bag. This contained items of no intelligence value, such as Japanese postcards, stationery, pictures, and clothing, and any soldier who handed over a souvenir needed for intelligence analysis was allowed to take an item from the grab bag in exchange. The unit was in effect a miniature ATIS, with various sections, coordinating the production of translation and interrogation reports of immediate operation value. [7] The attack was designated Operation Reckless in recognition of the risks involved in carrying it out. It showed the units to which they belonged. [36], The Australians decisively turned back the Japanese assault in the ensuing 2931 January 1943 Battle of Wau. From there the documents were immediately sent to Brisbane for translation by ATIS personnel. 11, Factors in Japanese Military Psychology was ever completed, although the material intended for this publication could have been used instead for Research Report No. If the transports succeeded in staying behind a weather front and were protected the whole way by fighters from the various airfields surrounding the Bismarck Sea, they might make it to Lae with an acceptable level of loss, i.e., at worst half the task force would be sunk en route. This information and the examination of shattered emplacements by engineers enabled marine and navy experts to construct in Hawaii exact copies of the Japanese pillboxes on Tarawa and then find the best way to destroy them. Key Terms 2, Alphabetical List of 40,000 Japanese Army Officer (May 1943); No. Philippine Series Bulletins represented special reports of items pertaining to the Philippine Islands. [12] General Headquarters South West Pacific Area Operational Instruction No.7 of 25 May 1942, issued by Commander-Allied-Forces, General Douglas MacArthur, placed all Australian and US Army, Air Force and Navy Forces in the Port Moresby Area under the control of New Guinea Force. It was canceled in favour of a daring jump to Hollandia (now Jayapura) in Netherlands New Guinea, bypassing the Japanese strongholds at Wewak and Hansa Bay. In mid-1944 many changes in organization occurred in the Pacific theatres. [19], Allied planners estimated Japanese forces around Hollandia at around 14,000 troops in total. Accordingly, the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, directed on September 22, 1944, that Advanced Allied Translator and Interpreter Section (ADVATIS) be established in the immediate vicinity of General Headquarters at Hollandia. Simultaneous operations from these two locations, one amphibious and one overland, would converge on the target city. 17 with Allied and Japanese Operations Among Natives of Dutch New Guinea; No. Primary Image: The US pursued a two-pronged offensive across the central and southwest Pacific to . [54] There was little resistance initially, but further inland there was some opposition as elements of the 186th Infantry reached the lake by 24 April. The plane in which Koga was flying crashed at sea, with no survivors. Also that fall, in the vicinity of Myitkyina, CIC Combat Interrogation Team (CIT) No. The landing was unopposed as the enemy garrison indicated its intention of surrendering by hoisting a white flag at the first sight of the invasion force. A fire caused by Allied bombing continued to burn in the Japanese supply dump for several days and later attracted the attention of a Japanese bomber, which attacked the beach area late on 23 April, resulting in more fires and killing 24 and wounding 100 more. Many of the captured documents provided significant intelligence to General Douglas MacArthurs forces in the SWPA. Documents were first captured from a Japanese plane downed in the Pearl Harbor attack. The umbrella term for the series of strategic actions taken by the Allies to reduce and capture the vast Japanese naval and air facilities at Rabaul was Operation Cartwheel. After the Japanese invasion of New Guinea the Americans, aided by Australian troops, organized a series of landings and other offensive actions against the Japanese in New Guinea. While MacArthur sought eight days worth of support from the fleet's powerful fleet carriers, Nimitz would only agree to commit this force for two days after the landings. In September 1945 they seized in Singapore important documentary evidence of war crimes, including photographs showing captured Indian soldiers being executed for refusing to join with Chandra Bose and the Indian National Army. The document having been translated immediately after capture on Biak, formed the basis of order-of-battle information for the task force attacking that island. Instances were noted of officers completely out of their depth, of men eating meals when they should have been on the firing line, even of cowardice. ATIS was established on September 19, 1942, and was headquartered in a suburb of Brisbane, Australia. 5, Bibliographic Subject Index for Enemy Publications 1-200 (November 30, 1944), with a supplementary index from 201-300 (March 1945); No. See Appendix I for information about the ATIS publication program. To ensure that all involved in captured records activities had an appreciation for records and information, the Allied Translation and Interpreter Section (ATIS) (Southwest Pacific Area [SWPA]) published, at the specific direction of the War Department, Publication No. The campaign was long and arduous, but by the end of 1944 the Japanese threat was contained in New Guinea. [45], At Tanahmerah Bay, after a naval bombardment from the three Australian cruisers commencing around 06:00, the two RCTs from the 24th Division disembarked from the four U.S. and Australian transports Henry T. Allen, Carter Hall, Kanimbla and Manoora and moved ashore aboard 16 LCIs. 72 (formerly ATIS Information Bulletin No. He did successfully conduct the Western New Guinea campaign in 1944 which liberated much of Dutch New Guinea. 255) Procedure in interrogating and handling [Allied] prisoners of war. Over 420 of these were published. RAAF radar could not provide sufficient warning of Japanese attacks, so reliance was placed on coastwatchers and spotters in the hills until an American radar unit arrived in September with better equipment. [5] The first Nisei linguists were tested when the Marines invaded Guadalcanal on August 7, 1942 and flew prisoners of war and captured Japanese documents were sent a short distance away to New Caledonia for processing by the Nisei language team attached to Task Force 6814. In early January 1943, Japanese documents taken from the body of a sniper killed near Soputa, New Guinea, revealed the entire standing operating procedure of the Japanese in that area. By 26 April, U.S. troops secured the two eastern airfields, and later that day linked up with forces advancing from the 24th Division advancing from Tanahmerah Bay. Before June, between 20 and 25 P-39s had been lost in air combat, while three more had been destroyed on the ground and eight had been destroyed in landings by accident. However, this is contradictory to the total number of Japanese combat deaths calculated across most individual battles in the campaign. Approval was granted four days later. Engineers operating amphtracks pushed forward from Jautefa Bay to the lake to carry the infantry around the Japanese positions at the lake, completing their flanking maneuver on 25 April. Fukudome was still carrying the Z Plan and the cipher codes. A unified American-British-Dutch-Australian Command, ABDACOM, under Wavell, responsible for holding Malaya, Sumatra, Java, . Fortunately, one American officer wrote in 1944, the enemy as a nation is addicted to keeping diaries, and converting everything into writing.. graduate Hollandia. The heavy cruiser Nachi, which was sunk in Manila Bay in November 1944, provided a massive quantity of annotated charts of minefields and defenses, diaries, logs, blueprints, fleet operation plans and orders dating back to before the Pearl Harbor attack, and numerous books on Japanese naval tactics and doctrine. The Joint Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean Areas (JICPOA), had its origins in the Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean Areas (ICPOA) which had been established on July 14, 1942 in Hawaii as Admiral Chester W. Nimitz intelligence center. While captured records were quickly evaluated in the field, almost all were eventually sent back to Hawaii, and some of those on to the Washington Document Center in Washington, D.C.[12] Although JICPOA was a major player in the captured documents intelligence business, it was ATIS, however, during the war years that handled the most documents. [20], I Corps under Lieutenant General Robert Eichelberger provided most of the ground forces for the combined Operations Reckless and Persecution. [40], About 6,900 troops aboard eight transports, escorted by eight destroyers, departed Rabaul at midnight 28 February under the command of Rear Admiral Masatomi Kimura. The following month at least 20 fighters were lost in combat, while eight were destroyed in July. Other organizations were established throughout the Pacific Theater to translate and exploit the records. Hollandia was a port on the north coast of New Guinea, part of the Dutch East Indies, and was the only anchorage between Wewak to the east, and Geelvink Bay to the west. By 1944 the school had outgrown these facilities and moved to nearby Fort Snelling. [6] The Joint Chiefs of Staff also directed the United States Pacific Fleet to assign aircraft carriers to provide air support for the landings. Admiral Nimitz exploited the same intelligence advantage when he planned the next stage of the Navys campaign in the central Pacific. The first major collection of captured Japanese documents in the Pacific Theater was made in August 1942 when the 1st Marine Raider Battalion, under Col. Evans Carlson and Lt. Col. James Roosevelt, made a harassing raid on Makin Island in the Gilberts. During the initial phase in early 1942, the Empire of Japan invaded the Australian-administered Mandated Territory of New Guinea (23 January) and the Australian Territory of Papua (21 July) and overran western New Guinea (beginning 29/30 March), which was a part of the Netherlands East Indies. The Netherlands, Britain and the United States tried to defend the colony from the Japanese forces as they moved south in late 1941 in search of Dutch oil. The Allied victories in 1943 set the stage for the strategic advances of 1944, but they did not determine the exact lines of attack. [28][29] Secondary landings would take place Aitape, 125 miles to the east, at the same time as those around Hollandia. Document numbers and a brief description including authority, title, date, area of reference and similar essential data were set forth under seventeen headings, such as 1) Diaries, Field; 5) Letters, Postcards; and 16) Technical Documents. The campaign between Allied and Japanese forces commenced with the Japanese assault on Rabaul on 23 January 1942. With the occupation of Morotai, the long drive up the New Guinea coast was strategically completed. [3] Of these, only one was considered to be complete. I Corps, became commander of the newly formed U.S. 8th Army. The information contained in these reports were bibliographically indexed. Meanwhile, on 30 March and continuing to 3 April these air forces attacked Hollandia itself and the airfields on the Sentani plain. In early April 1943, a Japanese map was captured showing hidden positions of 87 barges at Labu, New Guinea. This document was immediately translated and subsequently provided new bombing targets for the B-29s over Japan and during the early occupation provided a means of quickly locating and seizing armaments. By the time the Allied bombers and PT boats finished their work on 3 March, Kimura had lost all eight transports and four of his eight destroyers. The stores situation in the forward area grew more urgent as the supply line up the single road broke down. The beach quickly became congested, as it had also been the center of a Japanese supply dump prior to the assault, and engineers had to work to clear the area with bulldozers and construct a roadway to the beach's only exit. This document was used as a measuring standard for Japanese military activities on Luzon. By December 27, 1942, 1,100 Japanese documents had been received at the Advanced Land Headquarters, Brisbane, from the New Guinea area. [30][31] The decision to undertake these operations simultaneously stretched Allied shipping and logistics resources, and necessitated reallocating resources from other theaters and roles. Pre-landing reconnaissance efforts were hampered by the destruction of the Australian scouting party that was landed in the area by submarine in late March, and the reality of the terrain was only discovered through aerial intelligence that arrived too late. The War Department Intelligence Service established a secret school at the Presidio of San Francisco to teach individuals to be Japanese-language interpreters and translators. [5], According to John Laffin, the campaign "was arguably the most arduous fought by any Allied troops during World War II". It would commit all the remaining Japanese naval power to one last major battle with the Allies. Tweet. Coming from battle fields, crashed aircraft, graves, sunken ships and foxholes, many of them torn, defaced, water-soaked, soiled and charred, making them difficult or impossible to read. I am estimating that a cubic foot of records is 2,500 pages. [8] At the start of 1943, ICPOA was basically dealing with intercepted messages because not that many prisoners of war or documents had been captured. On November 5th, a map was captured in the Capoocan Area, Leyte, which presumable showed proposed operations, and was possibly connected with the Grand Offensive of mid-November. The Japanese at Rabaul and other bases on New Britain would have easily overwhelmed any such effort (by mid-September, MacArthur's entire naval force under Vice Admiral Arthur S. Carpender consisted of 5 cruisers, 8 destroyers, 20 submarines, and 7 small craft). Allied troops set up 105mm howitzer in Depapre New Guinea 1944. None of the senior officers present had been in post more than a few weeks and the senior air officer had been relieved following the destruction of his air forces at the beginning of April. The U.S. built Naval Base Morotai, . According to Morison, the Japanese "never again risked a transport larger than a small coaster or barge in waters shadowed by American planes. Most important of all, the bombers of MacArthur's air forces, under the command of Lieutenant General George C. Kenney, had been modified to enable new offensive tactics. In December 1943, an operational order indicating the times and dates at which Japanese submarine were scheduled to appear in designated spots in the Arawe area, New Britain, was translated by ATIS and immediately forwarded to Naval Intelligence where prompt action was taken. Campaign was long and arduous, but by the end of 1944 the had. [ 36 ], Allied planners estimated Japanese forces commenced with the Japanese Military Police Service Report. 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